Monday, March 24, 2014

Despite the worst roll-out conceivable, the
Affordable Care Act seems to be working. With less than two weeks
remaining before the March 31 deadline for coverage this year, five million people have already signed up. After decades of rising percentages of Americans’ lacking health insurance, the uninsured rate has dropped to its lowest levels since 2008.
Meanwhile, the rise in health care costs has slowed drastically. No
one knows exactly why, but the new law may well be contributing to this
slowdown by reducing Medicare overpayments to medical providers and
private insurers, and creating incentives for hospitals and doctors to
improve quality of care.
But a lot about the Affordable Care Act needs fixing — especially the
widespread misinformation that continues to surround it. For example, a
majority of business owners with fewer than 50 workers still think
they’re required to offer insurance or pay a penalty. In fact, the law
applies only to businesses with 50 or more employees who work more than
30 hours a week. And many companies with fewer than 25 workers still
don’t realize that if they offer plans they can qualify for subsidies in
the form of tax credits.
Many individuals remain confused and frightened. Forty-one percent
of Americans who are still uninsured say they plan to remain that way.
They believe it will be cheaper to pay a penalty than buy insurance.
Many of these people are unaware of the subsidies available to them.
Sign-ups have been particularly disappointing among Hispanics.
Some of this confusion has been deliberately sown by outside groups
that, in the wake of the Supreme Court’s “Citizens United” decision,
have been free to spend large amounts of money to undermine the law. For
example, Gov. Rick Scott, Republican of Florida, told Fox News that
the Affordable Care Act was “the biggest job killer ever,” citing a Florida company with 20 employees that expected to go out of business because it couldn’t afford coverage.
None of this is beyond repair, though. As more Americans sign up and see the benefits, others will take note and do the same.
The biggest problem on the horizon that may be beyond repair —
because it reflects a core feature of the law — is the public’s
understandable reluctance to be forced to buy insurance from private,
for-profit insurers that aren’t under enough competitive pressure to
keep premiums low.
But even here, remedies could evolve. States might use their
state-run exchanges to funnel so many applicants to a single, low-cost
insurer that the insurer becomes, in effect, a single payer. Vermont is
already moving in this direction. In this way, the Affordable Care Act
could become a back door to a single-payer system — every conservative’s
worst nightmare.

Meanwhile, Russian President Vladimir Putin today annexed Crimea to Russia. It
looks like Putin is trying to slowly reassemble the old Soviet Union.
And at this point, the best we can do is hope that it’s "slowly." Russia
felt that the Western powers had left them cornered. Well, Putin just
made their corner a little bit bigger.

Nobody can deny the fact that Christianity has played a huge
role in our history. From the first Thanksgiving to the ideas of Jesus
Christ that are embroidered in our culture today, Christianity and the
Bible is responsible a big part of our heritage.
However, many conservatives will take this fact way out of context. They'll think that you have
to be a Christian to be patriotic, which is simply not true. Following
the more secular teachings of Jesus Christ (being charitable, loving one
another, treating strangers with kindness) is what the men who founded
this country were for.
I don't want to waste my time listing all these obscurant far-right
arguments, so instead I'll list the facts straight from our forefathers.

“If I could conceive that the general government might ever
be so administered as to render the liberty of conscience insecure, I
beg you will be persuaded, that no one would be more zealous than myself
to establish effectual barriers against the horrors of spiritual
tyranny, and every species of religious persecution.”

- George Washington, letter to the United Baptist Chamber of Virginia (1789)

“Question with boldness even the existence of a God;
because, if there be one, he must more approve of the homage of reason,
then that of blindfolded fear.”

- Thomas Jefferson, letter to Peter Carr (1787)

"In regard to religion, mutual toleration in the different
professions thereof is what all good and candid minds in all ages have
ever practiced, and both by precept and example inculcated on mankind.”

- Samuel Adams, The Rights of the Colonists (1771)

“Persecution is not an original feature in any religion; but
it is always the strongly marked feature of all religions established
by law. Take away the law-establishment, and every religion re-assumes
its original benignity.”

- Thomas Paine, The Rights of Man (1791)

“Congress has no power to make any religious establishments.”

- Roger Sherman, Congress (1789)

"The way to see by faith is to shut the eye of reason."

- Benjamin Franklin, Poor Richard's Almanack (1758)

"I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the
whole American people build a wall of separation between Church &
State."

- Thomas Jefferson, letter to the Danbury Baptists (1802)

"To argue with a man who has renounced the use of reason is like administering medicine to the dead."

- Thomas Paine, The American Crisis No. V (1776)Note: You can read Paine's whole pamphlet, where he expresses his atheistic beliefs, here.

“Our civil rights have no dependence on our religious opinions, any more than our opinions in physics or geometry.”

- Thomas Jefferson, A Bill for Establishing Religious Freedom (1779)

"Christian establishments tend to great ignorance and
corruption, all of which facilitate the execution of mischievous
projects."

- James Madison, letter to William Bradford, Jr. (1774)

"There is nothing which can better deserve our patronage
than the promotion of science and literature. Knowledge is in every
country the surest basis of public happiness."

- George Washington, address to Congress (1790)

"During almost fifteen centuries has the legal establishment
of Christianity been on trial. What has been its fruits? More or less,
in all places, pride and indolence in the clergy; ignorance and
servility in the laity; in both, superstition, bigotry and persecution."

- James Madison, General Assembly of the Commonwealth of Virginia (1785)

Fireworks on Capitol Hill After Former IRS Official Won't Testify

By Michael O'Brien

A
tense scene ensued on Capitol Hill on Wednesday after a former IRS
official targeted by Republicans in an investigation into the agency's
targeting of conservative groups refused to testify before a House
committee.

Lois Lerner, the
former director of exempt organizations for the IRS, invoked her Fifth
Amendment rights -- as she had during a previous hearing last year on
the IRS's inapprorpriate scrutiny of conservative groups seeking
non-profit status -- during a House Oversight and Government Reform
Committee hearing.

The scene became
particularly tense after Committee Chairman Darrell Issa, R-Calif.,
immediately gaveled the hearing closed after peppering Lerner with a
series of questions that she refused to answer. Democrats were barred
from participating in the hearing in any meaningful manner.

Republicans
had recalled Lerner to testify after arguing that she had waived her
Fifth Amendment rights during a May 22, 2013 hearing by delivering a
brief opening statement before asserting her decision not to testify.

Issa
had suggested this past weekend that Lerner had, in fact, decided to
offer testimony. Her attorneys disputed Issa's characterization, and she
ended up invoking her Fifth Amendment privileges on Wednesday.

Issa
quickly gaveled the hearing shut over the impassioned objections of
Rep. Elijah Cummings, Md., the top Democrat on the committee who was
barred from asking questions or participating in the hearing in any
official capacity.

There's No Need to End Saturday Mail Delivery - Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.):
The U.S. Postal Service is one of our most popular and important
government agencies. It provides universal service six days a week to
every corner of America, no matter how small or remote. It supports
millions of jobs in virtually every other sector of our economy. It
provides decent-paying union jobs to some 500,000 Americans, and it is the largest employer of veterans.

Whether you are a low-income elderly woman living at the end of a dirt
road in Vermont or a wealthy CEO living on Park Avenue, you get your
mail six days a week. And you pay for this service at a cost far less
than anywhere else in the industrialized world.
Yet the Postal
Service is under constant and vicious attack. Why? The answer is simple.
There are very powerful and wealthy special interests who want to
privatize or dismember virtually every function that government now
performs, whether it is Social Security, Medicare, public education or
the Postal Service. They see an opportunity for Wall Street and
corporate America to make billions in profits out of these services, and
couldn't care less how privatization or a degradation of services
affects ordinary Americans.
Continue reading here: http://www.sanders.senate.gov/newsroom/must-read/theres-no-need-to-end-saturday-mail-delivery

Speaking of insane people, Sarah Palin discussed the situation in the Ukraine last night with Sean Hannity.
Wow. Talk about an echo chamber of idiocy. I love it when Sarah Palin
and Sean Hannity bounce ideas off of each other, because actual ideas
can’t do anything except bounce off of those two cement-heads.
Seriously, there is an international crisis, and these are the two
people that Fox News chooses to analyze it for the edification of their
audience? They’d be better off watching the Kardashians discuss the
Crimea.